The Mothers Of Invention* – Uncle Meat

This Transatlantic issue was the first appearance of "Uncle Meat" in the UK, keeping FZ's followers happy while Pye became struck through and Reprise eventually sealed a UK deal with CBS. It's likely the resultant low budget was the reason this didn't have the booklet found in US issues.

Zappa, ever-lured by new hardware and technicians who knew their chops, put this album together at John Townley's Apostolic Studios in NYC - reverently named after their prized 12-track prototype Scully, hooked to Lou Lindauer's circuitry. Ground-breaking technologies of the time and taken for granted these days.

The music, album title and sleeve art by Schenkel are an inter-connected parody of events in the life and times of the band. Sandy Hurvitz (Essra Mohawk) had worked with the band at The Garrick, where she was endearingly referred to as 'uncle meat'. It was she who had introduced FZ to Schenkel, who subsequently employed objet trouvé from his lair in a dental practice for the photo-montage of monstrous 'pop-star' lips and scientific experiment on the human brain. A vision echoed on "The Ark" sleeve and a 'conceptual continuity' to the androgynous groupies, Uncle Meat, sidekick Bimbo and the dynamic 'dynamo-hum' birth of Ruben & The Jets.

After the Uncle Meat intro Pamela Zarubica, as Suzy Creamcheese on "The Voice Of Cheese", informs us of her status in 'teenage America' and Europe. (She also intros on the "Louie Louie" vignette from the Albert Hall, London, with Preston on the pipe-organ). After 'Suzy's' initial intro comes "400 Days Of The Year" (a line from Bob Guy's B-side "Letter From Jeepers" produced by FZ) - which exists only as a title on early label copies, later becoming "Nine Types Of Industrial Pollution". We then head off into what is, essentially, a series of prank-Zappa instrumentals. These are littered with what FZ describes as, "...private jokes that nobody except of the band ever laugh at... all very serious and loaded with secret underground candy-rock psychedelic profundities".

This is a deliciously meaty double-woppa, packed with veg, sauce and cheese. Enjoy.